Video Transcript:

Welcome to Planet Bids, Business Certification, or Bench Training.

Bench starts off in the vendor portal, where vendors register or review their application.

Here, I'm already logged in as a vendor.

I'm going to go back into my profile.

Whether it's the first time I'm registering and I've completed the vendor detail, soon as I complete that or log back into my profile, I'll be here on the welcome page.

The vendors will go over to the left-hand side and click on your bench certification.

Here they will answer your question yes or no, would they like to apply for bench.

The question and the instructions below the question are configurable by you the agency.

As I scroll below we're going to see our certification status.

Here you can see I've already completed the application and submitted.

If it's the first time I'm completing the application it will say applying and then we'll quickly move to submitted once they complete the application and hit submit down at the bottom.

While it is in submitted stage, they can make edit changes.

The second you open up their application, it will change the status from submitted to pending, and the form will be unlocked until you make a designation of either deficiency, in which case they will be able to return and make corrections based upon your notice, Approve, in which case they can return at any time to reapply, or Denied.

We also have Audit Stages, which we will talk about later.

With Bench, we can have multiple types of certifications, so you can define the definition of the certification type, and the vendor can select all that apply to them.

They must select at least one certification.

based upon the certification type they select, then the number of category codes available to them to select from will appear.

Your instructions, your code number, and your code definition will be available for the vendors to select from by clicking either Add or Edit.

Once I hover my mouse over the description, the description will appear.

I can then quickly select, even say show me only those that I've selected, I can clear my search, I can uncheck selected and continue to select until I'm done and hit save.

They will then complete the rest of the application depending upon the questions that you have enabled in your app, depending on the questions you've enabled.

They will need to complete all fields, depending on their answer.

Owner's information, key staff, client references, other information, and your attachments.

Your attachments are configurable by you as well and will explain to the vendor what documents will need to submit to you.

Those documents can be either mandatory or optional depending on your configuration and then they will complete the certified message.

Once they hit submit they can check their application status at any time by returning.

Now let's look at your end of the system. Here we're logged in as San Mateo Community College District.

Access to the different areas on left is permission-based.

So here we're going to access business certification.

We can now search by different certification types if you are certifying off different input.

Here we can search by different certification types depending on what you're tracking. You can also sort and So today I want to see all the ones that have submitted that we need to review for bench and here we can see them.

Here I'm going to look I will see the application registration number, the name and the email address, the application they applied for, when they submitted, current status of their application, and if they've been certified previously what was their certification date range.

Once I select it to open, we will see the tabs across the top.

If you have multiple usage of business certification, you will see the different tabs.

Here we're focusing strictly on bench.

Vendor info is all of their main registration information, their contact, classifications, demographics, licensing, other licenses, company classes, descriptions, and category code.

The bench certification, the bench certification tab, you select edit to release the form and now you can see the status changed to pending.

We will see the very first time the application was created, last modified by the vendor and last modified by you the agency.

We'll see the forms that they applied for, all of their category codes and how they completed the rest of the application, including at the very bottom the files they've submitted. I can select any one of the files to open it up.

You will also have access to notes and attachments.

The notes and attachments tab will allow you to drop internal documents into this area. The vendor will have no access to notes and attachments.

You may also leave private notes that you can free form in.

Again, the vendor will have no access.

Comments and history, you'll be able to type in a private comment that you can search by in the search area.

Vendor has no access to this area.

History below will show you all of the back and forth history between you and the vendor.

you can sort your history by just vendor updates, agency updates, as well as any comments that you may have left.

And looking at any of these, you'll see it says show more. Once I select it, it will expand.

It will also include the documents that were submitted at the time. Go back to our bench.

Now that I've everything, I can change their application status.

Here if I found anything wrong I would mark them deficient.

The list of deficiency reasons that you see popping up here can be maintained in admin for business certification deficiency reasons.

You can then select from your list of reasons or create one on the fly.

Once you hit submit the vendor will receive an email notification letting them know that they are deficient and they need to correct their application and resubmit.

If as a vendor I return to my profile and go into the application you'll notice my status analysis deficiency and I only see the reasons that you've selected.

Once I make the necessary corrections and hit submit the process starts all over again.

Here I'm going to return and this I'm going to mark myself approved.

When you mark them approved or denied you will have an expiration date or denial date range.

It will create for the approved the initial approval date which is today and we can default it to one or two.

Once you change it to either denied where you can set the denial date or approved where it will default the expiration date range for you based on configuration.

You can override the valid from date as well as the expiration date and you can leave private comments.

Depending on your configuration, those comments may be internal only to you or will also appear on the vendor side.

Once I hit save, the system will do validations to ensure that you have not completed or if you hit save, the system will do validations for bench make sure that you've selected at least one category code that they must be certified for.

So here are the certification categories and within the categories what specifically are they certified for.

Now when I hit save my vendor has received a certification email and if they return to their if they return to their profile they will go ahead and see the reapply, as well as the approval letter, and what they've been approved for.

If they scroll further down, they can come in here and see what they were not approved for as far as certain categories.

They can select on letter to retrieve their approval letter from you. They can also reapply at any time.

Internally, if I search by that approved vendor and open them up.

I can return to the bench certification tab and also retrieve their approval letter if I need to.

The approval process will follow them throughout vendor management and bid management.

If I go into vendor management and go to vendor types and select bench and search, I will then see all of the approved vendors in business certification.

I will look over here under vendor types to see their approval type.

In bid management, when you open up any of the projects, it will also follow the vendor on the prospective bidders tab if they happen to be a bench, bid results if this bid was closing, and then finally on your project participation report.

You will also be able to track bench.

You will also be able to track it in classifications by notified, prospective bidder, bidders, and awards.

Externally for your vendor community, when they go to your home page, so long as they have logged in, whether they've been bench certified or not, they will be able to go into your certified vendor area and sort and search by your vendors by any of the criteria located up here at the top.

Once they find the vendor they're interested in, they may select to view the information.

There'll be limited information based off their registration with you.

In addition to that, if you go back to the home and go into bid opportunities, if we look on the perspective bidders tab, we will also be able to see if any vendors have the certification type bench.

We will also see that on the award results once the awards have been released.

And that concludes our training for bench certification.

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